


the danger the cage will relieve

by river_of_words



Series: a problem shared (a problem doubled) [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (identity issues and self-harm both mainly in chapter 3), Character Study, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Self-Determination, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, The Vault (Doctor Who), i mean what did you expect this is dhawan!master we're talking about, identity and free will, it has an ending im proud of though, self-forgiveness, themes of self-compassion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26481670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/river_of_words/pseuds/river_of_words
Summary: Between setting Gallifrey ablaze and meeting the Doctor in Australia, the Master stops by the Vault a couple of times.
Relationships: The Master (Dhawan) & Missy
Series: a problem shared (a problem doubled) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1925188
Comments: 50
Kudos: 25





	1. tell me we get used to it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A storm blows in.

The crackling buzz as the containment field engages make Missy’s startled fingers create a jangle of disharmony on the piano.

“Oh, have we stopped knocking now?” she snipes as the heavy doors grind shut, keeping her eyes on the keys for a moment longer to give the impression her guest _is_ intruding on her activities but she _supposes_ she _could_ squeeze him into her busy schedule if it was _really_ necessary. She sighs and rolls her eyes, turning around as the containment field falls away.

“What is so pressing that–”

She cuts herself off and jolts back in shock, elbow hitting the keyboard and a muddy heap of notes echoing around the Vault to end up sticking to the walls to prophesise a future she doesn’t want to know about.

The person leaning heavily against the doors like they’re trying to shut the world out is not the Doctor. Not her current Doctor, at least, as whoever it is tosses Missy the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver as they walk past her, not sparing her a glance as they start pacing, spinning circles, swirling whirlpools.

It’s been so long since the timelines have shifted in any capacity worth paying attention to that the shuddering, rippling jumps they are making now is making her feel motion sick. The sonic’s lying on the floor within arm’s reach but Missy ignores it and presses her hands over her ears instead, following the uninvited visitor with her eyes as she tries to convince herself she can’t see the storm clouds of damning realisation gathering over the two of them.

With every revolution the unwelcome visitor further unravels the fabric of Time that Missy has woven herself into for the past seventy years. Timelines fraying, folding, flashing agitated sparks when they touch.

The writing on the wall pulses in time with the heartbeats in her head and whispers dreadful promises, oozing Time out of time like oil into water as he paces, whirls, and mixes it together until the entirety of the Vault is suffused with murky miasmic dissonance that drips from, and seeps between, her helpless fingers.

Slowly turning on the spot, Missy watches him pace around the Vault like a memory gone wrong, a memory broken like an open fracture sticking out of shredded skin. Pressure builds, Time twists, she cracks, he snaps. Nauseating.

To try and guard her individuality, to separate herself from him, is hysterical and futile because herself is what she’s watching. But her present is still distinct from his and in her power for as long as she lives so she takes it in both hands. Uses the piano as buffer, reminder, promise, or clock. Clear notes to clear out the oppressive paradox filling the Vault, pressing against clammy bricks, threatening to make it all crumble. He doesn’t look up but falls into step when she begins to play.

Past and future are making friends and having borders just means that you are touching to begin with. What separates beginning from end is where you decide to point the knife. What separates you from me is the point at which you decide to aim Time as your scalpel and pull apart one intact tissue with a singular set of heartbeats into two selves that can’t stand the sight of each other. Can’t bear the sound of each other, heartbearts out of sync puncturing eardrums with the feedback.

From the piano stool on the platform she watches her past and her future curdle into tangible corporeality in the person in front of her as he kicks unlocked doors shut like he’s trying to keep something out, trying to keep himself in. She cursed the door for staying shut, he curses it for ever opening. She has not left the inactive containment field. Both of them preserving illusory boundaries.

She plays until she tires. She plays until she can’t hear what she’s playing over the crashing waves of timelines resettling in her prison, his sanctuary, their Vault (where they bowed, where they changed). It’s telling her: admit, concede, surrender.

She finds a chair and watches him; a hurricane confined, the cracks in his skin, the rain in his eyes, the thunder in his head, the lightning in his fingers. He buzzes like his thoughts are made of static and mutters like his tongue can discharge them. The way he moves like stopping hurts makes Missy go cold with the stale taste of recollection in her mouth. Torn Time tears further, a dead languid grin with edges like teeth, liquid hot future trickling through and congealing into inevitability on the floor.

She lets the coldness turn her into stone as if her silence and stillness will balance out his motion and noise. His words like hail, like frozen dread, hammer down: “You shouldn’t have said it. If I hadn’t had said it, you wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have done it, you shouldn’t have said it.”

Knowing it’s pointless she asks him what he’s done, what _she’s_ done, what she will do. He doesn’t answer. She knew he wouldn’t. There’s no conversation to be had with him today.

She watches him try to outrun the shadows until his legs give out. With pleas, threats, and promises she watches him try to quiet down the storm in his head. A storm she remembers, a torment she dreads, a past she’s trying to leave behind come back to pull her back down. How dare she try to escape.

Missy sighs. On the armrest of the chair she taps a beat to the rhythm of memories. The very sound of life, of survival. When he joins in, his tempo is erratic, in time with his hearts. Eventually he evens out, eventually he quiets down, eventually he shuts up.

When she wakes up, he’s gone and she regrets having fallen asleep in a chair.

Later, when it’s evening, probably, and Time in the Vault has untwisted itself and gone back to being a deceptively calm pond hiding its depths like nothing has happened, there’s a knock at the door and the containment field engages. Missy doesn’t look up. Doesn’t acknowledge the Doctor when he takes the field down. Doesn’t listen to him telling her how to be Good. The Rules and Principles. The Promises and how it Feels. How she Should Feel. She traces a circle around the room, following in the footsteps she will make, and kicks a chunk of her cold coagulated future under her bed.

“Missy? Are you listening?”

She is not. She has celebrated her achievements alone, and alone she will mourn her losses. She stares at the Doctor blankly. There is no conversation to be had with her today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i finished it! i finished it! this took 3 weeks! i finally finished it! for comparison, my last fic with missy and 13 is 4500 words and took 2 days from zero to posted. this is 8500 words and took 18 DAYS. but it's done! and im very happy with it
> 
> i really indulged my stylistic, what to call it? fancies?, here. im writing like 'does a sentence have to be "comprehensible"? isnt it enough to simply have words in a rhythm that sounds pretty?' 
> 
> i really like making time a multisensory experience. making it something that you can see and hear and feel and taste and describing it with a different sense in each sentence. because i imagine it's kinda like a colour we cant see. it's a sense we dont have. so i feel like, if i describe the same thing with sound words in one sentence and with touch words in the next, the eventual impression people will have of it will end up somewhere in the middle?  
> i have missy put her hands over her ears even though i didnt exactly describe time as doing something that SOUNDED bad at that time. i did that in the time flu fic too, idk i just like doing that i guess, having them react differently than we'd expect. like if time hurts to look at they'll cover their ears and vice versa when it sounds bad? idk  
> because there wouldnt be a sense to block. like if light is too much, you can cover your eyes, if the sound is too much, your ears, but the time sense isnt on the outside, so there's a sort of miscommunication between input and reaction i would guess.  
> or/and also it makes the experience more readable to us i suppose? because they wouldnt hear or see or touch time but im still describing it with those words because they would still respond to it in a way that is analogous to what we do when we experience light or sound or touch you know? anyway
> 
> title of the fic is from 'but never a key' by the dirt poor robins (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gJRAzqK7yg)  
> and what missy is playing is vivaldi's summer, specifically the bit about the storm, because of course :) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXikgaLMhGE)
> 
> i have 4 (5, but the last one is just epilogue and im posting it together with 4) chapters of this and im going to spread it out a little bit. posting today, friday, monday, and friday again. to give myself a bit of time to finish some more stuff so next time it wont be like 2 weeks between posting.  
> oh yeah and the chapter lengths vary quite a bit. this one is 1100, second is 2000, third is 3500, fourth is back down to 1500 (1700 if you include the epilogue), just so youre prepared :)
> 
> let me know what you thought! or let me know any thoughts you have about missy and dhawan!master and missy in the vault, or about what time feels like to time lords, anything. i like hearing people's thoughts (if theyre nice thoughts, you know, dont be mean pls)


	2. i will reveal you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Him closing doors she wants open.

The next time the containment field engages without warning Missy isn’t in it. The buzz of it echoes beneath her skin and makes the words she was reading blurry. She lazily flips the page anyway.

“Knocking,” she drawls. “It’s just good manners.”

“Pathetic,” he sneers, throwing her a glance over his shoulder as he pushes the doors closed.

Her gaze drifts off her book to the sand collecting underneath his grimy shoes, his bloodstained clothes once purple. She hears Gallifrey in the shape of this thoughts, viciously circular. Where there’s smoke– The doors shut with the rumbling of crumbling buildings.

“You’re still here.”

“You’re here again.”

He narrows his eyes. Maintaining eye contact, he reaches into his pocket and one by one drops onto a nearby table: a device that she’s pretty sure is a TCE, a collection of shrunken humans, and... a key? She can’t tell exactly from the one disinterested glance she deigns to give it.

Like the floor is burning him, he moves around, reacquainting himself with the space she knows every crevice, corner, shadow and secret to. He opens drawers, flips through books, exposes hiding places, stirs up memories with the sharply apathetic nonchalance of a practiced surgeon on their ten thousandth operation. Time distorts behind him like eddies behind a boat and she tries not to shiver as he thoroughly bares her nervous system and extricates it from where she’s woven it through Time in the Vault. Missy claps her book shut.

“How long?”

He pointedly ignores her as he rifles through her closet. Keeping an eye on him, she slinks over to the table to see what the other thing he left there was. It’s a Tardis key. It tugs at her mind, at the boundaries of the time that still belongs to her, like a prodding finger worming its way inquisitively underneath a healing scab. She risks closing her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath as she stamps down emotions she’s been locking away for decades. Then she pockets the TCE. She’s back by the dresser on the other side of the room when he turns around, holding a jacket like he’s planning on keeping it.

“You can’t borrow that.”

He gives her a smirk that’s radioactive at the edges. “What’s yours is mine, love.” She’s not sure it’d still fit him. Time thickens treacle-like above his head.

“How old are you?” she asks.

“The door is open,” he responds.

She tries and fails not to look. Suddenly he’s close, something in his eyes that makes her feel like he’s walking her backwards off a cliff. His next words are a whisper, a sacred secret, “I left it unlocked.”

Like a bubble popped, the cliff turns out to have been a roaring waterfall. As she falls she sees the eroded rocks of her own defenses. As she lands in frigid depths, the world is silent, and there’s nothing between her and the vast and empty darkness. She is going to drown here.

He’s enjoying the ripples he’s making, wide eyes drinking in her terror as a reflection of his own, buried beneath the contempt and satisfaction warring on his face.

“Why didn’t you leave?” It might be an accusation as easily as a plea.

She lifts her head, meets his eyes, and steps forward. Boot hitting stone with the clang of sword meeting sword.

“Why didn’t _you?”_

He skips, turns, jumps onto the platform and counters.

“I did.”

She follows suit, won’t be looked down upon.

“When?”

He grins and lets himself drop back off the platform, ceding her the space.

“Soon.”

From opposite sides of the piano they circle each other, his trajectory twice the size and twice the speed of hers. Time slows and swirls into bitter paradox behind them as she looks into eyes she hasn’t looked out of yet but already knows the perspective of.

His grin drops slowly and unevenly, a performance forgotten, leaving the charred skeleton of ancient fury.

“He’ll never give you what you want, you know,” he says as he tugs at the timeline she’s been cultivating for almost a century. She smiles disdainfully. She has pruned every possible runaway sidebranch, nipped all her bad impulses in the bud; his self-sabotage is not going to derail her that easily.

“And what’s that?”

Onto the platform, on the stool, over the piano, he crosses the space between them with self-destructive hubris, timelines snapping under his feet, opportunities wasted.

“Think you’re funny?” he says, landing in front of her. “I have foreknowledge, remember? _This_ –” he gestures between the two of them, “–isn’t a fair game.”

She pulls on the timelines, takes back what is hers, where she still has a chance, trips him up. “I’m a good cheat.”

He snarls. “I’m better.”

What he touches cracks her open, turns her inside out, twists apart their lives vertebra by vertebra until marrow shows, shows how it twists and strains around that one focal point, inescapable as a black hole, spiraling higher, coiling tigher into itself, a snake biting its own tail, writhing in torment, its misdirected wrath warping its own body into a wreathe of flesh and sinew, wound around a void, a want, a wound, injury, injustice, suffusing from infected skin a mouth so hungry and confused it cannot identify its prey – this hollow nourishment – as wrong, even as its blood, sour acrid and its own, familiar, turns its crooked tongue vermillion.

Maybe it _is_ sickness.

Madness how they twist and change, molt identities to get away from this stained inheritance that has left them powerless in front of the one person who can fill this emptiness inside. This one person constant, inchangeable, immune to whatever it is that afflicts the Master as they run themselves into the ground, leave trails of their own blood as much as of others, their own bodies as much as others', always ending up in the same place, asking for the same thing, getting the same answer–

“HE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOU!”

The timelines screech. Push comes to shove and he hits the floor with a thud. Her knee in his back before he can get away, her fist in his hair.

“ **They don’t care about us!** ” he screams like he’s finally been given permission to. “We bowed to them!”

“We wanted to!” she screams at her thoughts and fears made manifest.

“We are nothing to them! You are defenseless and we _are_ _nothing to them_!”

She pulls his head back, hisses, “ _Say that again_.”

“Defenseless,” he rasps. “But don’t worry–” upside down he meets her eyes with desperate amusement, “–I won’t tell anyone.”

She drops him and steps back, creating distance, space, time shuddering around them, elastic, pulling back into shape as she walks away, tries to redefine her boundaries, find the ends of her, unwind them from the ends of him, tearing herself apart in the process. Painfully futile and inescapably compulsive self-preservation.

“You don’t like it,” he says, rolling over and sitting up.

She looks at him warily. “What?”

He grins, weaving his fingers together in front of his chest. “Me!”

She crosses her arms. “Hate to say it–”

“Do you,” he asks darkly, without a hint of amusement.

“Yes, but–” He twists his hands and makes his fingers crackle like bubble wrap. She's unfazed. “–you’re not a very promising prospect.”

“No?”

“No.”

“What would you rather have seen?”

“Someone who didn’t have blood in their hair.” She pauses, then adds, “For starters.”

He touches his hair experimentally and then jumps up and disappears in the bathroom. She follows, leans against the doorpost with her arms crossed, watches him try to identify and remove the stuff in his hair. Their eyes meet in the mirror. He grins.

“Oh! The disdain!”

“We are looking at the same thing,” she says.

“Our past and our future,” he hums, reaching over to open a drawer.

She steps in and slams the drawer shut. “It doesn’t have to be.”

“It already _is_ ,” he says, turning to her sharply. “This is your present–” he spreads his arms demonstratively, “– _Missy._ ”

She crinkles her nose at the self-loathing in her name. At the sand and the grime and the blood. At the pain, the pain, the pain. It drips off of him. Off his leaky thoughts, not kept in line by incessant drums, not kept in place by unshakable walls, swirling endlessly, pointlessly, to their eternal centre of gravity. Still relentless, his movement turns inward, in on himself. A feedback loop that starts and ends with the Doctor, swirling in in in, loop upon loop, each pressing, bleeding, into each other until inextricable. Past is future, future is past. What he does, she has done. She’s already in decaying orbit around this same black hole and the only direction she can go is _further._

He grins. “Do I unsettle you?”

She sighs. “Do you resent me?”

They lock eyes. Memory, telepathy, or the synchronicity of thoughts in two brains but one person: _Do I scare you?_

A small smile plays at the corners of the Master’s mouth, open and earnest, and with a sigh Missy leans back into the feeling that _yes_ , her future does resent her, and _yes_ , her future does unsettle her, and that this might have always been the case. The familiarity of terror and self-loathing the only thing that can be relied upon to be there in each of her lives. She sees her face reflected in his. Until the sudden shadow falls. His eyes, jagged and ruthless like a geode broken open, promise, like the answer to her question: “You are _lying_ to yourself.” He steps closer, vicious. “You _know_ you are.”

Her arms uncross but she doesn’t step back. Doesn’t admit, concede, surrender. Doesn’t bow to Time, to fate fortune future, to dread dread dread. She doesn’t hang her head in the face of herself. She says,

“You know I’m not.”

The way he stills like a stormcloud raining, draining into nonexistence, staring at her in disbelief, despair. He’d been looking for proof and she just confirmed his greatest fear. She confirmed both of theirs. Missy swallows and nods. Understanding reached, decision made. She slowly reaches into her pocket, fingers closing around the TCE.

He stumbles back when she points it at him, startled by the sudden movement, but when he registers what he’s looking at, he starts laughing. Laughter like exhalation, surfacing from a deep dive, panicked relief.

“Oh, I don’t change!” His laughter drops like a parachutist with a defective parachute. “I _never_ change.” Taunting, his eyes are piercing. Twisting the knife with unbearable deliberacy. He wants this. She wants this and he wants this and she’ll want this when she’s him.

“ _Do it_.”

She crinkles her nose and recoils. The TCE clatters on the floor. “No.”

“What?” He’s so surprised he forgets to be angry.

“No.” She throws up her hands. “You know what? _This–_ ” she gestures at him, he scoffs “–was sort of to be expected.” A bitter pill, but she’s used to eating poison. “But _this_?” She kicks the TCE over to him, and leans back against the doorpost, folding her arms again. “What is this about?”

He straightens up, annoyed with her dismissiveness. “I thought it was pretty clear–”

“Where’s the style?” she interrupts, impatient. “Where’s the drama? Where’s the blood, the guts, the glory?”

He opens his mouth to protest but she shuts him up with a finger against his lips, leans in close, fire in her eyes.

“Like _this_?” she asks him, quiet and lethal like a blade in the back. “Without _witnesses_? In _silence_?” She shakes her head. “No.” She might have been caged, but not declawed. She might have adapted, but she is the Master. And this isn’t how the Master dies. “We can do _better_.”

And then, _finally,_ a spark jumps over from her fiery eyes to his and embers start smoldering in his eyes again. She steps back, satisfied.

He asks, “What did you have in mind?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic only goes up in stylistic Extra-ness chapter by chapter. i think i threw 'show dont tell' out of the window and JUST did show. im not telling you anything, good luck figuring out whats going on
> 
> i went on a bit of an etymology deep dive during this. found out that the word tempest comes from the latin word tempestas, which originally comes from TEMPUS, meaning time. (here's the post i made about it while writing this: https://you-have-to-use-your-imagination.tumblr.com/post/629589650402639872/you-have-to-use-your-imagination-tempest)  
> apparently in a lot of languages the word for weather comes from the word for time. like, the first word they start using to mean 'weather' is just 'a bit of time' which makes a lot of sense but also is so cool!  
> tempest comes from time and storm comes from turning. torment also comes from turning and tormenta in spanish means storm. and hooo boy is that a wellspring of inspiration when youre writing about the master!
> 
> so you know proto-indo-european? pie is the theorised language that all languages in the indo-european language family come from. linguists reconstruct it from existing languages. it's very interesting. etymonline.com has these lists of words that come from particular pie roots. for example this list of words that come from the word fragment *terkw-: https://www.etymonline.com/word/*terkw-?ref=etymonline_crossreference
> 
> anyway, the tenuous connnections between turning and twisting and storms and torment were very very interesting to me while writing this and i decided i wanted to write a paragraph using mostly words coming from pie fragments that mean 'twist' or 'turn'. because the master seems to me like they can be summed up by turning and twisting. spiraling.  
> so that paragraph between [He snarls. "I'm better."] and [Maybe it is sickness.] i tried to make with mostly twisty words. eventually i decided i wanted it to move from twisty words to visceral words when it was leading up to the master saying 'he doesnt care about you'. so words like blood and flesh and things like that.  
> i'll put my notes for this paragraph in a tumblr post here, if you're interested: https://you-have-to-use-your-imagination.tumblr.com/post/630847038015307776/these-are-just-some-notes-for-this-master
> 
> that paragraph also kinda fell into iambic meter at the end? that seems to just kinda happen while i write sometimes, when im writing long sentences, and i can never get myself to delete or rewrite it because it just sounds so nice! also when i found i had some near-rhymes in there, i did add 'familiar' just to make it rhyme with 'vermillion'. it's my fic i can do what i want
> 
> another thing i like about this chapter is that a lot of the dialogue has double meanings, which i didnt do on purpose but just kinda happened by virtue of them being the same person i think. like the line 'this isnt a fair game' refers to how this conflict/conversation between missy and the master at that moment isnt equal because he knows the future. but it also refers to how missy trying to win over the doctor by being in the vault isnt fair to her/them. that the doctor isnt being fair to them.  
> or that 'we are looking at the same thing' as in, she's seeing him look at her in disdain too. and theyre both looking at his face in the mirror. theyre looking at the same thing.
> 
> anyway i really like this fic, as you can tell, and i put a lot of thought into it, as you can also tell, so if you liked it, idk would you leave a comment? tell me your thoughts about missy and the master idk


	3. by way of honouring the things we once both held dear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now we play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw self-harm (not graphic), spiraling thoughts, identity issues, mild depersonalisation/derealisation
> 
> so because apparently i thought this fic wasn't stylistically ExtraTM enough, this chapter has musical accompaniment!  
> okay, so, here's a playlist:  
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt7erjOXr1MNuuIPL86bOQescxL7zU1Q1
> 
> the first song is vivaldi, that belongs to the previous chapter, you can ignore that for now
> 
> the second song is 'comptine d'un autre été' from amélie. this is what missy's playing at first when the master notices. you can turn that on when you reach the little [2] if you want a bit of flavour.
> 
> the third song is a version of boléro (i'll explain it in the notes at the end), you can turn that on for a bit of flavour at the little [3].
> 
> the fourth song is a piano version of tchaikovsky's waltz of the flowers and here's where the Extra-ness grows exponentially. the other two songs, you can just turn on as background music. to get a feel for what the master is hearing during those paragraphs. just as a bonus. the moments arent long enough to fill out those entire songs (and for boléro only the part without drums is relevant).  
> but with tchaikovsky i wrote the entire scene TO the song. reading speed will vary of course, but i tried to match the scene to the song.  
> it starts at [4] and ive left spaces where the song moves into a new passage. i think you can hear it in the music, and i describe it in the text as well, so that you can kinda get a feeling for what missy is playing while a certain paragraph is happening.
> 
> so thats... unnecessarily complicated. sorry. but there are moments when the music matches up with the text very nicely i think.  
> you can read it without the music once first and then read it once again with the music (or jump right in with the music if youre brave), or dont listen to the music at all, im not the boss of you. i just hope maybe it can enhance the experience a bit. i think it turned out cool.

Just as Missy is about to indulge herself, twice over, with the long list of revenge suicide plans she’s thought of over the years, there’s a knock at the door.

“Are you at the piano?” comes the muffled voice of the Doctor through the door. They roll their eyes in tandem before Missy gently pushes the Master back away from the bathroom door and steps out.

“Stay here, I’ll make him leave.”

“No! I want to talk to him.”

Missy has to blink a couple of times before she can think of what to say to that. She looks the Master over, feeling the ragged threads of all the possibilities he’s already ruined for them hanging around them, and decides to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Okay, so, I lose my sense of style _and_ I go stupid in my old age, good to know.”

“I’m barely a year older.”

“Even worse! Stay here, I’ll tell him I’m busy.” She holds up a hand to stop him walking out the door after her. He still tries, obviously.

“With _what_? He’s not going to believe that!” He puts his foot between the door as she tries to close it behind her. “You just want to keep the Doctor all to yourself.”

“You already hAD HIM!”

“That’s not fair! I can’t remember this! You’re stealing this conversation from me, right now!”

“And whose fault is _that_?! Just stay here. And shut up. If you let the Doctor hear you, I’ll kill you.”

“We both know _that’s_ an empty threat.”

“ _Fine_ , if you keep quiet I’ll help you get the Doctor’s– _your_ Doctor’s attention.”

“Psh I don’t need your help.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Says who?”

“Says me, you’re a mess.”

The Master opens his mouth to protest but is interrupted by the Doctor. “Missy?”

“Yes, one second!” she yells and then turns to the Master. “Stay here and be quiet.” She shuts the door in his face and gets in the containment field. “Come in!”

* * *

The Master slides down against the door pretending to ignore the muffled conversation that sounds so much like the memories that have been pounding in his head since–

Is it really denial if he knows it’s denial? He already knows he’s going to be listening. Is that just called ineffective denial? He already knows it’s a bad idea, but it’s as inevitable and fast-approaching as the ground during a fall. _Wrong thought_. He grabs his hair in two fists to keep from slamming his head against the door. **Just keep quiet.**

He’s already made what happened unavoidable. He doesn’t have to ruin the last few months of this good thing ~~she~~ , ~~he~~ , _they_ had. It’s fine. **Just keep quiet.** _Easy for her to say._ No, it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. It had taken such a long time. Oh how ~~she~~ he’d screamed. Screamed for such a long time. _Let me out let me out let me out let me out._ Grass is always greener. They should’ve never let ~~him~~ her out.

He doesn’t even know how to refer to himself now. Can’t even use Master because she doesn’t ~~bear~~ wear that name. He’s nothing now. Inbetween. Between shore and ship. He’s forgotten how to do this. Seventy years was all it took to forget how to be the Master. And one trip through the Matrix was all it took to forget how to be Missy too. He’s nothing now. He’s nothing now. He doesn’t exist.

He takes a few quick breaths and keeps a tight hold on his hair and bites his tongue. **Just be quiet.** Don’t make a noise. Muffled Scottish voices through the door like the taunting of this thoughts. _Almost. Almost. You had this. Almost. Almost._ Himself, himself, he did this himself, always himself. He had this. He almost had this. He could have had this. If it wasn’t for himself, he would have had this.

 **Just keep quiet.** He pulls his knees up and smashes his face into them. The taste of smoke and dirt and blood gets into his mouth. Sand crunches between his teeth. His eyes burn like his memories. He didn’t _mean to do it._ No but he _did._ They deserved it. They should’ve kept their secrets better hidden. It’s all their fault! _They deserved it._ Their screams like ~~a whole screaming world on fire~~ he shouldn’t have said it, he shouldn’t have done it, he didnt _mean to do it._ Yes, he _did._ He _liked_ it. He relished it. Their screams like song, their blood like honey. The _indulgence_ , the _relief_. Oh how he’d missed it. He drank in the carnage like he’d wandered the desert for seventy years and he drowned in it like a flash flood. He wanted to miss it again _._ Better to miss it and have the quiet than to have it and have to suffer the loud. It. is. _so. LOUD._

“Be _quiet_ ,” he hisses and yanks his hair.

Don’t make a noise. Don’t mess up what you, they, we, you, I– He presses his face into his knees and chews a scream into pulp to swallow so it sits in his stomach like cold putrid mud. **Be quiet.**

He takes a few quick breaths. The Doctor’s voice drifts through the door. He opens his eyes and leans back, presses his ear against the door. He can’t make out what they’re talking about. He snarls. It _had_ been real. It _had_ been real, Doctor. You could’ve trusted me. You could have. I did _well_ , Doctor. Look at how well she’s doing. She’s doing everything you want. You could have trusted me. I did that for you. You should have trusted me! He yanks his head away from the door. **Just shut up.**

The Doctor was right not to trust them. They couldn’t be trusted, they couldn’t be trusted even when they tried. There was no point, no hope. Especially not now. Not ever again. He yanks his hair.

Eyes still closed, he mentally scans the bathroom. Just his quick ragged breaths in his ears. Back of the drawer, there’s a piece of glass. He doesn’t remember what it’s from. Might be stone, not glass. The Doctor was careful but the Master had got their hands on this. Hid it well. For emergencies. He hadn’t used it in years, decades? But he had never thought to get rid of it either. He opens his eyes. Should still be there. He freezes, listens to the voices behind the door. Still muffled, still going. He’s being quiet enough. Keep it that way. He gets up slowly, opens the drawer very slowly. Just his quick ragged breaths in the air. Be quiet. It should still be there. It should be. He never threw it away. Right? It should be– YES.

He sees it. A tiny shard. Not even three centimeters long. Did someone shatter a glass, a mirror? He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t care. He reaches for it and freezes again. Listens. They don’t know. He’s being quiet. He’s quiet. He’s being quiet. Just keep quiet.

He takes the glass and indulges in a little more carnage. At least this one is quiet. At least this one makes everything quiet.

* * *

[2] He’s lying on the floor. Everything’s quiet. He hasn’t had any thoughts for a while. Time, broken and grating, has been swirled into submission, doesn’t hurt. It’s not prickly anymore. Just cold. When he realises he can hear Missy playing piano, she might have been doing so for a while already. With gentle firmness the music unhooks his teeth from his tail. There’s blood. With tender resolve the music unfurls him. There’s pain. He doesn’t want to think again, doesn’t want to be, doesn’t want to see. With stubborn mercy the music allows him to find the rhythm in his breaths and hearts again. Shows him a direction to point his anger that isn’t himself, shows him how to move in a way that is forward -or backward, whatever the case may be- a way that isn’t spiraling, looping, coiling, eating himself.

He exhales slowly.

[3] A very familiar, very _repetitive_ , melody makes him open his eyes. He can just about reach the door with his foot and kicks it open.

“Boléro?” he yells through the open door, head on the clammy tiles. “ _Really_?”

He can hear the grin in her voice. “Come be my drums.”

“I hate you.”

“I know!” she sings just as she starts the second repetition.

He groans and sits up. It takes him until the third repetition to stand up to put a stop to this madness. He dusts off his clothes, not that it does much good, and pokes his head out of the bathroom.

Missy is grinning devilishly at him. “It’s fitting, isn’t it?”

He shakes his head in dismay. “I hate you.”

She laughs. “That’s fitting too!” She starts the next repetition. “Say it again!”

“Are you trying to drive me mad?”

“Too late for that!” She’s having way too much fun with this. “Come be my drums!”

He scowls at her, staying put. An undefined dread putting lead in his legs.

Missy pouts. “Ah, come on! It’s funny!” She watches him, gleefully playing another repetition. “Good lord, you’ve lost my sense of humour too. It’s all downhill from here. Well, better enjoy it while I can!”

Yeah. She’d better.

Missy sighs dramatically. “ _Fiiine._ ”

[4] She abruptly changes the song. She has to divert her attention from him to the keys to get the runs right and he watches her get absorbed. He can feel it. Her obsession and anger rounded up and steered into the concentration it takes to get her fingers on the right keys at the right time. The memory of it floats around the edges of his mind like something out of a dream. Elusive.

He watches her thoughts dissolve and her feelings take the shape of the melody, guided by the rhythm like a river by its banks. Furious and violent, this water will drown you if you’re stupid enough to step in, but it won’t flood a city. Not confined but, _contained_.

Maybe there is something to walls. To limits and barriers. To restriction. He bristles. Regulation, then. Maybe there is something to digging the holes yourself, as long as you do it purposefully. With direction. With intention. With aim.

The persistent waves of her cold determination soothe his smoldering mind. Smoke and ash still smother him but the fire abates. Retreats. For now.

A pause like a breath.

A melody like a sentence, soft and deliberate. Eyes still on the piano, she talks to herself, to him. She lets the music carry him like it carries her, takes a bit of the weight off of him and lets it float up, away, swirl around the room, dance around the aftermath of their fight. She mixes time and music into ink to write promises on the wall. _I know this song. I know you.  
_

Her acceptance is unrelenting as a metronome, fierce as a living heart. She doesn’t feel the regret yet. Doesn't know yet that living hearts stop. And sometimes when they start again, they don’t. Sometimes a vital piece goes missing, gets lost in transcription, buried in memory, in history, in the ground. His fingers twitch and flutter with the memory of the dirt he dug up. Hers flurry into an incomprehensible forgiveness so forceful it’s like she’s kicking his legs out from under him to just to prove she’ll catch him.

He bristles, pushes himself away from the wall and whirls around the room, following the trajectory of the storm. Path of least resistance. His hands find any and all things to touch; leaves flitter in his wake, metal chairs ring out, immovable stone claims his skin. She glances up at him briefly as his path edges closer to the piano with every rotation.

He walks faster, tears the leaves, kicks the chairs, presses his fingers into the wall like he can dig his way out. Trying to make destruction feel good, trying to make destruction relieve the pressure in his chest, the urgency in his legs, the helplessness in his hands. It always has. It always had, before _her_. Before she messed everything up. 

She slows down as he approaches.

“You’re lucky the Doctor’s oblivious because you’re Loud,” she says.

He avoids her eyes. “ _You’re_ lucky, you mean.”

“Oh yes, I forgot, mister ‘I want to talk to him’.”

“Hm, lapse in judgement.”

 _Liar,_ says the wringing in his chest.

“Come play,” says Missy.

“I can’t.”

“You can, you’re doing it.”

“I’m not you.”

“Aren’t you?”

 _Aren’t you?_ says the uncertain crumbling void in his chest.

“Come play,” says Missy. “You know you want to.”

“I don’t.”

“I’ll tell you then: you want to.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“If I know that, might I not also know some other things?”

“You don’t know _anything,_ ” he hisses, looking her in the eye as he zips past the piano, another revolution.

“Playing louder isn’t going to make me join you!” he says louder than necessary. Their eyes meet. He can hear how her fingers stumble and trip but she corrects and keeps playing. He doesn’t understand how she doesn’t want to smash the piano in half. How was that him? How did he do that? He rubs his arms hard. She looks at him, right through him.

“Come sit, play with me.”

The sharper he gets, the gentler she becomes. Like they have to balance each other out somehow. He shakes his head angrily, dragging his hands along the walls as he walks and walks and walks.

“I’ve forgotten how.”

“No, you haven’t.”

She’s not allowed to do that. _He_ knows _her_ , not the other way around, she doesn’t know him yet. She gives him yet another knowing look.

“Focus on yourself,” he sneers, indicating the piano.

She glances down briefly and up again, missing keys, hitting wrong ones.

“You’re _messing up,_ " he spits, acerbic.

 _Yes,_ she nods. “I can hear it.”

She slows down again. “Don’t you miss it?”

“What?” He takes his bloodied fingers off the wall, following the faint trail back with his eyes until he meets Missy’s. She grins.

“The piano.”

He looks away, lets his eyes drift around the Vault, presses his fingertips together absentmindedly, rolls the grains of stone around over his broken skin. “Don’t you already know, miss ‘I know so many things’?”

“I thought I didn’t know _anything_?”

“That’s _right,_ ” he snarls. The amount of things she didn’t know. The _weight_ of them. It would break her. _Will_ break her.

“That’s why I’m asking.”

He shrugs. “I don’t have one.”

“What?”

“A piano.”

“That’s why I’m offering you mine,” she says without missing a beat.

He stills, watching her hands as she focuses back on the piano. He’s done his best to destroy most of what she’s built here, left Time feeling like a fraying tapestry. He absently feels its edges.

He’s destroyed most of her chances, burnt all of her bridges, stuck her between a Vault and a cliff, made what will happen inevitable.

But she’s taking his mess, his frayed bleeding edges, and she’s reweaving them, as well as she can with red raw fingers. Holes fall in the tapestry, in the safety net ~~she~~ he had so painstakingly built. He might be feeling sorry. It might be something else.

“He hasn’t been exactly helpful, has he,” Missy says.

The Master steps a little closer, lingering behind Missy so she can’t look at him. “He doesn’t know either,” he says.

“Likes to act like he does,” Missy says, irritated.

“In front of an audience, preferably–”

“–loves dragging his little humans into it.”

He takes another step closer. “We do it too.”

“How else are we supposed to get his attention?”

“How does he get ours?”

“Doesn’t need it–”

“–always had it.”

“I’m _tired_ ,” Missy says, like the sighing of his bones.

“Yes.”

“Why do we let him do this to us?”

“Dissect us?”

“Dismantle us–”

“–unravel us–”

“–leave us with the mess–”

“Looking forward to it?”

The droning repetition of her last notes underscores her silence.

“You are who we are too,” he says as she moves into the next passage tentatively, reluctantly almost.

“Am I?”

The Master steps up on the platform. “He seems to think so.”

She looks around to him, eyes wide in surprise, hopeful, baffled, pleasant surprise. “You really think that?”

He frowns. “You don’t?”

“You have to ask?”

“Apparently.”

They look at each other in genuine bafflement. Getting a response you don’t expect when you’re talking to yourself. Exciting.

Missy snorts and turns her attention back to the piano. “Theta’s stupid though.”

“Not exactly a reliable frame of reference,” the Master agrees.

But the only one they have.

“Not the only one,” Missy says. In response to his questioning look, she adds, “I just learnt something new.”

Oh. Yes. And so did he. About dams and barriers.

Missy moves over on the piano stool, freeing up enough space for him to sit on her right.

He doesn’t quite yet, but edges ever closer, and when her hand jumps right to play the high D’s en E’s, his is already there.

Time, the ragged edges of what he’s broken, chafes between them like cloth against open wounds. He wants to move away, let the wound be a wound to spite himself, to hurt himself, to punish himself. It can’t heal like this and he doesn’t want it to. Wants it to rot, decay, decompose him. Make it stop, make it end, let him be sand and ash like the rest of them. Absolve him from the stain, the guilt, the sickness, the corruption. Absolve him from the blood on his hands that he _didn’t_ put there _._ That he didn’t _want_ there. The blood they put on him, _in_ him. Her blood is his now, and he doesn’t want any more of it to flow. Wants it to rot, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, red turns to gold turns to black turns to grey. Wants it to watch its own demise, the end of the line, by the hands of the Master.

But there’s another pair of hands at this piano. The hands of the Mistress – _Missy_ – who’s him maybe in all the ways that count. Whose hands are his in the way that makes a difference – or doesn’t. And she’s tugging at the cloth, urging him to open the wound, to show the jagged hole in him that hurts so much, to let it bleed. She’s him maybe in all the ways that matter. He sits.

Missy drops her right hand, his takes her place. The longer they play the more his fingers remember. And the more the wound gets pulled open. And the more the chasm where his hearts used to beat, where once upon a time his self used to live, starts pouring memories like water. And he adapts. Responds by playing faster. Catches the memories in melody and makes them dance around the room. Dance, not spiral.

The music binds them, ties them, to this place, to each other, to themself. Two ends of a pendulum swing figuring out where their centre is. _What_ their centre is.

Always moving, never still. Always falling or flying, chasing or fleeing, until the difference is meaningless. They’re two points in the same movement. One bigger than they can see. Only visible is the rope that holds them up. Only tangible is the feeling of falling, of flying, of chasing, of running. Of moving, always moving. Never still.

But neither is music. It exists as movement, as change, as Time. Like them. It speaks their language and they can exist in it. They can dance between the walls that surround them, on the ropes that hold them hostage. Drums may govern them, determine their speed, but they can write the melody. Their path may be predetermined but they can break it as they will. Remake it as they will.

Draw together the edges of their bleeding lives and stitch it into tough and stubborn scars. And keep moving. Keep swinging. Another revolution, another turn around their sun turned black hole. They will be here again. Different but the same. And they will still not be able to see the curve of their swing. Only this point, only this moment, only this note.

They mix time and music into the ink with which they write promises on the wall. _I’m not sure who you are, but I know what you do._

You take what is beautiful and you make it go bad. You break it. Because this is what They do. And you are a product of Them. Your life, your death, your life again. Your blood, your breath, your reason. Made by Their hands, in the image of her, that they twisted. They took what was beautiful and they broke it. They broke it and made you. And no matter how much you try to run, you’ve always done _exactly_ what you were made for. This is what you do. You do what you were made for. And this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to take someone beautiful, and you are going to break her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boléro, because i promised: i learnt about boléro through this one episode by radiolab https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/unraveling-bolero  
> theres a certain degenerative brain illness that makes people become very focused on repetition. they start making art with repeating visual elements, or music. maurice ravel, the composer of boléro, had this illness. boléro is like 15 minutes and it has like 2 melodic lines, which it keeps repeating over and over, adding instruments as it goes along.  
> the drums are a very important part of it because they have to keep the timing and they have to keep doing it steadily the entire time. the same drums, having to keep steady, for 15 minutes, while other instruments come in and play the same melody over and over and over and over, each time slightly different, different instruments, but same melody. same steady drum.
> 
> you see why i thought this was fitting. also i agree with missy that it is hilarious and im sure the master will agree when he's in a slightly better mood.
> 
> also, if youre not sick of my chapter notes yet, i really really like how the piano turns out to be this emotional management tool? i think ive hinted at it in other fics too because ive always felt like it would just be very useful for missy (which is also why i headcanon her getting it earlier than 10x4). i think she'd really find a way to calm down in the piano. you need your hands, you need the concentration, your entire mind gets taken up by it. and i think she'd learn to use it as emotional management and i think dhawan!master is so overwhelmed and so far past his limits he wouldn't even be able to remember emotional management tools. he's just falling back into murder.
> 
> but missy sees that. she knows him because she knows how it feels to be him because it's similar to simm!master i think. except that the murder doesnt numb the pain enough anymore. so missy coaxes him into playing because she knows it'll help.  
> i really liked making them do that. it's self-care. it's self-compassion. it's really really kind. i dont KNOW if missy canonically would be able to be this kind to her future self, it's a lot to ask. but i like to imagine she would.  
> because missy is still very unhealthy in the way she interacts with the doctor, but i think the kind of trauma that leads to the murder coping mechanism, i think by this point she's got a bit of a handle on it, she's healed a lot i think. 
> 
> anyway, tell me your thoughts. let me know if you listened to any of the music while reading! if you thought it'd helped the feeling. let me know your headcanons about the piano!


	4. tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pendulum swings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you wanna cry, may i suggest listening to yann tiersen's le moulin while you read this? no guarantees, but it worked for me while writing this  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6nmTJHMFFk&list=PLt7erjOXr1MNuuIPL86bOQescxL7zU1Q1&index=5&ab_channel=YannTiersen-Topic
> 
> chapter title from richard siken's poem scheherazade

The Master’s visits are irregular, unannounced, and always startle Missy half to death when he barges in, but she finds she minds it less and less each time. It’s nice to talk to someone who gets that the Doctor’s approach to morality is utterly incoherent. Granted, it’s herself, which takes away a bit from the satisfaction, but she’ll take who she can get at this point. To talk to anyone aside from the Doctor is a breath of fresh air.

“There’s just no rhyme or reason to it!” Missy complains one day when the Master walks in shortly after the Doctor has left and all of the Doctor’s ridiculous rules are still fresh in her mind.

“No, there isn’t,” the Master agrees, dropping into a chair. “No internal consistency whatsoever.”

“You can get partway there with pattern recognition but–”

“It’ll trip you up!”

“Every time!”

“You just have to learn them all by heart,” the Master says. “It’s what he does.”

“It’s what he does!” Missy agrees. “I know! So seeing as you’ve already failed the test, how many do you remember?”

The Master considers. “I think I’ve got... five?”

“No murdering,” Missy says, counting on her fingers.

The Master shakes his head exasperatedly. “No murdering, but that’s just because they don’t want us to have any fun. They murder too!”

“Right,” Missy says, holding up a second finger. “No murder, except sometimes murder is okay.”

“If you feel bad about it, it’s okay.”

Missy nods seriously. “And then there’s a whole list of situational exceptions!”

“Murder some people to save some other people. Murder these people, but not those other people. No murder until someone does something bad then maybe murder,” the Master lists off.

“Wait,” Missy holds up a hand. “Say all that again, but slower, and let me find a pen first.”

* * *

As promised Missy helps him with a plan to get future Doctor’s attention. She does all the hard parts, naturally. He just infiltrates MI6 and ‘accidentally’ bumps into the Doctor. And then he texts the Doctor! While she is stuck here! Having to listen to his lectures! It’s so unfair.

“You’re _texting_ him?!”

“Oh, give it a rest! You were fine keeping him all to yourself the other day!”

“But he’s _texting you_? While he’s here with _me_?” She’s properly outraged. “Bloody cheater!”

The Master throws his hands in the air. “I’m YOU! And he doesn’t even know who I am! He thinks I’m a dumb human!”

“Oh, so he actually likes you more than me!” Missy walks away, biting her tongue in frustration.

“Actually, he talks about you all the time.”

She turns around. “Really?”

“It’s annoying.”

“What does he say?”

The Master waves a hand around and fishes his phone out of his pocket with his other. “Vague allusions about his–” he puts on a mocking voice, “–‘childhood friend’, who he’s ‘grown apart from’. It’s nauseating.” He looks through his phone. “Nothing that would imply he’s keeping someone locked up underneath a university, of course,” he adds absently, “because that would be _illegal._ ”

“Can I see?” Missy asks, approaching.

“No!”

She’s already got his phone.

“Hey, that’s private!”

She gives him a look. He jumps up when she starts typing.

“Oh, no no no no no!”

* * *

They stay in contact while they’re both stuck on Earth. Her in the Vault, him waiting for the pieces of their plan to get into place. Their devil’s patience comes in useful. They watch the same shows on Netflix and discuss them when he comes by. All things considered, it’s surprisingly nice. The fact that the Doctor never found out about them also helps to keep morale up.

February 2017, when it’s been a week since she’s seen anyone and Missy’s starting to wonder, the Master walks in with the words: “You’ve not been forgotten. Monk invasion.”

She blinks. “Excuse me?”

“It sucks at the office right now. More than usual, I mean. Can I stay here? I brought food.” He holds up a bag with groceries.

She stares at him for a moment and then nods. “In that case.”

He puts the bag on a table and she walks over to see what he’s got. She was starting to get a bit hungry.

“How long is this going to take?” she asks. “The invasion.”

“Six months.”

“Six _months_? What is the Doctor doing?”

“Being held prisoner.”

“For Rassilon’s sake–” She scoffs. “Typical.”

“But we get a good opportunity out of it. He’ll like us– Well, _you–_ More after this.”

She perks up a little.

“And in the meantime, you can learn–” He holds up his phone. “Gnossiennes.”

Missy grins. “That’s more like it! Good to know I haven’t entirely lost my touch.”

He grins too. “No, I haven’t.”

When their time with the monks is coming to an end and the Master is getting ready to leave, the timelines settle like a wind dying down. Their gentle swaying and shuddering of the past months, or, year by now, have become so familiar that their sudden stillness feels like a deafening silence. Missy looks up from the book she was reading.

“Is this the last time?”

He shrugs and it means yes. She sits up.

“Tell me then. What did we do to Gallifrey?”

He gives her a sharp smile, comfortingly familiar. “That would spoil the surprise.”

“ _Why_ did we do it?”

His smile drops. His voice is quieter when he says, “Because it’s what we were made for.”

She nods slowly and looks at him apologetically. “I had to try.”

He meets her eyes. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for trying.”

She gives him a little wave and the locks on the door beep when they close behind him.

When the Doctor walks in a few days later with his newest pet and asks for her help, Missy gives it readily. When he tells her she did it wrong, she disagrees. When he tells her she hasn’t changed, she wants to point at the trembling heap of still points that somehow are supposed to make up the trajectory of her lives and she wants to ask ‘what do you call this? am I not change incarnate? isn’t it you who is stuck? isn’t it you who is static?’.

When he tells her there’s no hope for her, she knows, and she tells him that just because there is no hope, doesn’t mean there is no point. That just because you’re in the same place as before, doesn’t mean there is no progression, no evolution, no gradual unfolding. She tells him that you can’t lay her out flat and linear because she’s circular and cyclical. That just because his way of growing involves death and loss and leaving behind, doesn’t mean her way of coming back and repeating, of never losing never dying, involves no growth at all.

The Master had been right though, the Doctor likes her more after this.

When she’s been roped into doing Tardis maintenance (anything, god anything to get out of that Vault, she’ll even wear the overalls, just let her look at something other than those damned stone walls) and he tells her that she’s never learnt to hear the music, she wants to ask ‘why can’t you see me? i’m standing right in front of you, why can’t you see me? i’ve never hidden myself from you, you know exactly who i am, why can’t you see me?’.

When she asks him what she’s supposed to do with all these wounds she’s poked open at his request, why these thawed memories taste so salty, he shows her a picture of what he sees when he looks at her. It confuses her, for a heartbeat, before she recognises it. Recognises a person she used to be. Lets them float through her mind and wonders briefly if that wasn’t better, before she remembers the pain of it. The pain of that person. And she doesn’t want it anymore.

When she’s standing in the mud in a fake dusk and it’s now or never and every swing of the pendulum is loud in her ears, the Doctor tells her she’s changed. She laughs, she scoffs, the pendulum swings.

When he tells her he’s sure of her, it terrifies her. If it’s her linearity he’s sure of, she can't give him that. She’s not sure which action, which point on her trajectory, will look like linearity to him. She wants to get it right, but she doesn't think she has a choice in the matter. The pendulum swings.

When he tells her he wants her by his side, something deep inside her, something she hadn’t realised had been holding on so tightly, lets go. She knows this feeling. This is death. The pendulum swings.

When she tells him she wants to be by his side too, he reaches out his hand to her. And now she understands, knows what she will do. It will not look like linearity to him. It won’t _be_ linearity. It will be cyclical. And he won’t ever be able to understand it but, it will be progress. So, no, she says. Sorry. Just no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is basically the end. there's still a small epilogue which i like a lot too. i like this a lot. i really like this as an ending for missy? i think i did her justice? i like the stuff i explored about the master and missy in this fic. a lot. i kinda dug up a lot of new stuff that i hadnt really thought about before.  
> the way they are like music, how they could be really good with music, the way they are cyclical. vs the doctor's linearity.  
> there are so many ways the doctor and the master contrast. like entropy vs stasis, cyclus vs linearity, Good vs Evil, transformation vs curation. 
> 
> i really like that i found this cyclus vs linearity thing. i think it does the master justice. because they have a certain cyclicness to them dont they? they repeat, a lot, they turn and turn and turn and it seems like they dont move, dont progress. see dhawan!master who the doctor and a bunch of people who watch doctor who too seem to think has "regressed" to his old ways. no! you can clearly see missy in him. this is PROgress (progress in the sense of change, forward, different, not necessarily in the sense of Better. because that depends on your values doesnt it?)
> 
> to put the master as cyclical makes it so that their way of being is not necessarily wrong, it's not necessarily LESSER. just because they repeat and cycle doesnt mean theyre not growing or changing or that they arent going anywhere. they ARE moving, they ARE living. it's just different than the doctor's way. and the doctor cant understand it, because theyre more linear. forward, no looking back. the doctor is like goodbye to the master's hello. 'hello, here i am again. hello, we're here again. hello, im asking for the same thing again. hello, im doing the same thing again' and the doctor is like 'people die but you have to live with it and you move on' and forgets, not like forgets, but also kinda forgets, leaves behind, thats better phrasing. the doctor leaves behind the people in their past, because they have to. they have to move on. the master doesnt leave behind. doesnt leave anything behind. keeps cycling back.  
> and im not saying it's healthy. im not saying the master is healthy. they are not. but their cyclical nature doesnt make them inherently unhealthy. they are unhealthy AND cyclical. they could be cyclical and healthy too i think.
> 
> oof who else is feeling emotional about the master in this chili's tonight?


	5. epilogue: that’s the path that you chose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A storm passes.

The day he lets himself disappear in the outback, the Master goes by the university. Breaks into the Vault to find it empty, like he knew he would. He looks around, breathes the still air, feels Time petrified without people to bring it into motion. He sees the tattered tapestry of self-determination they tried to weave together from the scraps of non-choices he left them with. They tried, they did. But this was inevitable. It might have been inevitable before he made it so. He might have made it so to feel like he had a choice in the matter. _He_ ruined it. _He_ did it. _He_ did. This wasn’t Time or Time Lords or the Universe playing tricks. This was _him._ He did this to himself. A bitter pill, but he’s used to eating poison. And if he has to, he’d rather put the spoon in his mouth himself.

When the storm clouds gather he doesn’t run, he doesn’t pace, he doesn’t scream, he doesn’t break. He plays. He plays the storm until his hands are too tired to do anything else. Then he goes inside his Tardis and materialises around the piano. He looks at it, standing in his console room, with behind it, through the open doors, his prison, his home, his friend, his life. With a flick of a button he closes his Tardis doors.

And he moves to Australia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he plays the storm by vivaldi of course. what missy played in the beginning  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXikgaLMhGE&list=PLt7erjOXr1MNuuIPL86bOQescxL7zU1Q1&index=1&ab_channel=BrooklynDuo
> 
> this is a nice send-off for him right? for missy and the master. i think i did them both justice
> 
> and here we have the agency theme again! the master and agency, i might never be done talking about them
> 
> chapter title from 'but never a key' by the dirt poor robins, which the title of the whole fic is also from. because it's a very master song
> 
> oh also! im keeping this monday-friday schedule until i run out of stuff to post. so monday i'll post the 10&13 part of this series


End file.
